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Introduction:
Global Wind Energy Council (GWEC) on March 25, 2021published by the Global Wind Report.
Highlights
- Though, 2020 was a record year for global wind power industry, but this report warns that there is a need to install new wind power capacity three times faster by next decade in order to achieve global climate targets & limit global warming to below 2°C above the pre-industrial levels.
- In the year 2020, 93 GW of new capacity were installed.
- It is a 53% year-on-year increase.
- But this is not sufficient to ensure that world will achieve net zero emission target by 2050.
- As per the report, total global wind power capacity is up to 743GW now. This is helping the globe to avoid over 1.1 billion tonnes of CO2 annually. It is equal to annual carbon emissions of South America.
- Report warns that, world needs to install a minimum of 280 GW of new wind energy per year in a bid to avoid worst impacts of climate change. Thus, industry & policymakers need to act fast to accelerate deployment.
- It underlines that, Governments across the globe must work with ‘climate emergency’ approach to eliminate red tape and planning delays. Government must expand grid infrastructure to scale-up wind power at the required pace.
- Wind power is a cornerstone to achieve net zero emission target and power a green recovery because it is cost-competitive and a resilient power source which is having most decarbonisation potential per MW.
- According to the report, technology innovations and economies of scale has quadrupled the global wind power market in size in past decade. Growth in 2020 was driven by installations on large scale in China and US which are the two largest wind power markets of world. Both the countries have over half of total wind power capacity and they accounted for 75% of new installations in 2020.
Climate Emergency approach
- GWEC has called the policymakers to take ‘climate emergency’ approach to eliminate red tape and reform administrative structures to speed up and streamline licensing and permits for projects.
- It has also asked to increase investments in grid, ports and other infrastructure which are required to ramp up installations.